Taiwan will in principle accept a new draft framework worked out at the last minute by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to advance the Doha round of talks, Yen Ching-chang (顏慶章), Taiwan's permanent envoy to the world's top trade organization, said yesterday.
In order to continue global trade talks, Taiwan will in principle accept the WTO's newly revised framework, with the exception of terms regarding key agricultural issues, Yen said.
Yen made the remarks after the WTO released a new compromise draft of the July package at the last minute before a Friday deadline during a three-day negotiation meeting in Geneva, in which representatives of all 147 WTO member states took part.
The Taiwanese delegates did their best to protect the country's interests in the meeting through a joint offensive built upon with other countries which share a common stance with Taiwan, Yen said.
As the draft package has not made any changes to the agriculture section -- the most contentious field among member states -- regarding tariff restriction quotas and tariff cuts, which the Group of 10 (G10) have strongly opposed, Yen said that Taiwan will not make any comment on its own in this field for the time being.
Economic Affairs Vice Minister Chen Ruey-lung, who attended the meeting, echoed Yen's remarks and said that consensus reached on industrial tariffs and trade facilitation will largely help boost Taiwan's exports and industrial development.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts